


Life, Light, Rapture

by YellowWomanontheBrink



Series: 30 Crossovers Challenge [2]
Category: Frozen (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: 30 Crossovers, Adventure, Alternate Universe- Crossover, Gen, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 06:03:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4168740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowWomanontheBrink/pseuds/YellowWomanontheBrink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first snowfall after Elsa accidentally froze Arendelle turns out to be more eventful than she could ever have dreamed of. Gen/No Pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Elsa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous/gifts).



> Hello! YellowWomanontheBrink here, still on hiatus! I'm just typing up some old shit from last year while trying therapeutically cure my writer's block. Whoever said time is the best medicine is a damn liar. If I simply waited for my writer's block to go away, I would never write again.
> 
> Anyway, let it be said that I do not ship Jelsa. In fact, I hate it, and the whole crossover, but one of my fav followers asked me for a RotG/Frozen crossover a year or so ago so I wrote her one. It's complete, and four short chapters. This will be updated weekly. Hop you enjoy it! I actually quite enjoyed writing this!

Light, Life, Rapture

A Crossover by YellowWomanontheBrink

Though Elsa was schooled as long as she could remember to be queen, trying to take over from a bickering, mostly inefficient Council was a lot harder than she anticipated. No one could make up their mind about anything (all the time) and even though Elsa was apparently a witch, no one seemed to understand that she understood virtually nothing about magic; especially not her own. She knew nothing about curses or spells or enchantments.

It was not as though she would ever admit it—despite scrapping her "conceal, don't feel" methodology, she was still a very private person and not one to share her feelings, and unfortunately for the state, opinions. A queen was supposed to be an infallible guardian of her people; a support to her king and the perfect example for all the ladies of Arendelle.

Despite the constant conflict of power between the newly indicted Queen and the Council, and the aggravation dealing with such fools inspired, Elsa retained her tentative grasp on her power. She was slightly ashamed to admit to herself that she relied wholly on Anna to keep that grip firmly.

Anna who was so foolish in her youth, but so loving and forgiving, full of dreams and an unfailing sense of wisdom and fun. Everything that Elsa loved dearly and fiercely was connected to Anna and her enduring optimism and romanticism. Elsa did not smile much, but when she did, it was usually because of her sister. Guilt constantly niggled at her senses every time she remembered those long, lonely years. She knew she that she knew better than to be around others at the time, with her powers so out of control, but that did not mean that Anna did. Anna had never seen the danger in Elsa's powers. Whenever Elsa had tried to reject Anna for anything, she would notice that irrational flicker of fear, crying "don't shut me out". She always made sure to compensate for every rejection, and she felt just a little bad that she often did it not because she was actually sorry, but because she knew Anna was not well without her.

Besides Anna, her first summer as queen was chockful of diplomacy. Dignitaries and lords and ladies and merchants and, ugh, princes, of every kingdom and republic of the mainland—and some from even farther. She did like the Prince of Corona, she supposed. He was as shrewd as his wife was trusting and only a little presumptive. The fact that he was married and the father of three children and expected absolutely nothing from her or Anna had nothing to do with it.

She had never been so thankful for Anna's innate knack for getting along with people and giving easy smiles, no matter how little sense the girl had. Elsa still tended to be nervous before large crowds of people. She could not stand the feeling of being judged. Sometimes, she could still hear whispers of "Witch-Queen" among the peasants and the court. As much as she liked to think she did not rule by fear, she knew that the terror of the people played a large part in her mostly smooth ascension to the throne. The servants, welcomed back into the previously closed palace, jumped at shadows and whispered, "What if she freezes the harvest? The witch will be pleased to see us all starve. Will she summon great monsters? What if she decides everyone should live in eternal winter?"

Elsa quite liked summer, thank you very much. Harvest time—autumn—was a mercantile nightmare. Thankfully, even though she was queen, she did not have to try most of the cases herself; that responsibility was left to the judges. Unfortunately, most of the judges decisions had to be approved by her. Since she was a new queen, several lords decided that she would be easy pickings. Every ambitious lord and their wives tried to pass ridiculous laws through her, without care or concern for anyone but their own factions. She swore she would go insane before the second month had passed. Everyone worked, everyone complained about this and that and the seaports were stocked with ships going in and out of the country. After being barren of administration for so long, the city was severely understaffed.

She had never looked forward to winter before. With winter's approach, she could always feel deep-seated yearning, the basest want for her power to be released, a gentle tug at her core begging her to go outside. It was also when Anna was the most insistent; in the winter, she could not even sneak out from the castle, as Elsa suspected she did when she became frustrated.

Before, winter was something to fear. She did not know how she felt about it now.

Elsa confided nothing in anyone though sometimes she thought Anna was more perceptive than the airheaded girl let on, if the odd looks the girls sometimes sent her meant anything.

Her fears proved to be unfounded, at least, until the first snowfall of the year.

By that time, most of the hubbub had quieted and the people had gotten used to, if not endeared to, their witch queen. Trade was nearly nonexistent with the fjord frozen, and the field workers and ice harvesters headed down south to their home, away from the cape as the business dried up. The palace was mostly self-sufficient; the storehouses and granaries were close by. The children that lived in the palace—and how strange that was, now that so many servants had moved in to care for all the visiting dignitaries—were ecstatic. The many wide, open courtyards were buried under heavy snowfall, and the snow was clean and not mixed with mud or rocks.

Elsa was startled the morning that she looked out her window after being awakened by the squealing of young children. The creation of her snow had only been welcomed with terror and fear. The ecstasy in the children's eyes was akin to the slimmer in Anna's eyes when she was little and every night was a midwinter night in the ballroom. Even the bishop of the orphanage had let the orphans out after morning prayer to play.

Elsa had almost forgotten how fun the snow was in the wake of her fear. Stern though she was, even she couldn't help but smile as the children pelted each other with fluffy, soft snowballs (rarely like anything Elsa had created; even as a child, her softest snow had been wet and heavy). Olaf posed jauntily as they built snowman replicas of him, though they always collapsed when the children tried to balance what would be his torso on the stubby legs of snow they constructed. they decorated the snowmen with their own scarves and hats and gloves, their noses, ears, and hands reddened by the cold.

The winter air was mild, the cold just enough to be brisk but not biting. Elsa's breath did not fog, and her smile dimmed at her realization. Soon enough, she was frowning.

"Didn't expect someone like me to be so...dour," a low, bright voice broke her wistful observation.

She startled, but not hard enough to shriek. Floating before her, balanced impossibly on a shepherd's crook, was a vagabond, younger than Anna. He was deathly pale, with huge blue eyes and hair whiter than her own. His nose was blue, but his cheeks were slightly rosy in a way that reminded her of Kristoff, though he was so slight as to look nearly starved, like some of the Gypsies that like to lurk in the square during the summer.

It took her a second to realize that he was the one who had spoken, for his voice did not match the youth of his face, and she stepped from the terrace into the drawing room, arms raised offensively before the boy.

Smirking, he stepped lightly from the balcony onto the terrace, swinging his staff into the corner of his arms, raising his hands in the universal sign of 'peace'. Or of surrender, but there was nothing subdued or submissive about this boy.

"Who are you?" she ordered, glaring suspiciously.

"Ah," he gasped, blue eyes shining and eyebrow raised in surprise. "So you can see me." He smiled, expression changing slowly from surprise to happiness, "You can see me!" he said, quieter as if he were talking to himself. Flipping his stick acrobatically to his left hand, he bowed low, hair flopping forward. "Jack Frost at your service, Queen Elsa of Arendelle."

His tone was lighthearted and mocking, and Elsa frowned at being addressed so formally, but without the fear or respect her title usually garnered. Granted, she was not used to being referred to by a title at all.

"Jack Frost?" she said, doubtfully.

The last she heard, Jack Frost was a fairytale, especially popular among the settlers that had fled to the New World and coming from the Slavs. He was a herald of winter, apparently, a gentle spirit of winter, fair and fun. Some tales painted a nice picture, of a spirit that rescued children from thin ice and bringing early frosts to save unfortunate crops, one she could believe if she had not experienced the misery winter could bring herself. Others were not nearly as complimentary. Some tales spoke of laughing in blizzard winds and icing cobblestone streets, of dying of old men whose last breaths were stolen from their frail grips by unyielding cold. The most common tales told of a fickle spirit who adored children, polite ones especially and was not nearly so kind to older patrons. Some stories spoke of a bitter, broken man, or of a lonely, naive child who did not understand the effects of his shadow.

Either way, Elsa was not about to take chances. For all she knew, the boy could actually practice witchcraft, and styled himself after a spirit in order to trick unassuming victims. He certainly looked like a wanderer, with his thick, worn peasant cloak heavy and white with frost, barefoot with the tattered ends of his trousers dangling over his pitifully thin ankles. He wore neither a hat nor a muffler, hands bare, woefully underdressed for the Northern cold. Elsa felt the cold as much as he seemed to—that is, not at all—but at least she did not bare her unnatural traits for the whole world to see like this "Jack" fellow did.

Making up her mind, she nodded her head slightly and crossed her arms. "Jack Frost is just a fairytale. He does not exist, and you should not pretend to be him."

As suddenly as he had appeared on her balcony, he vanished before her eyes. She was alone. The quiet was more eerie than comforting now, and her body was tense with anticipation. She was certain now the boy was a witch. She had never managed to vanish with her powers before, and Elsa was certain she had never practiced any unholy arts.

Beneath her feet, frost not of her own making bloomed, and she gasped as the curved, delicate ferns appeared in a spiral on the fine marble and crawled up her skirts. They danced along the walls and tiles and laced the couches. They lit up the shadowy corners of the room with a dull, soft light.

A chill ran through her body, and Elsa never got chilled. A breeze flew through the room, putting out the warm, if necessary fire in the corner.

Fragile little frost figures twirled around in the wind: elk, hare, and even a little fix figure danced around each other in the cyclonic, and when the fox darted forward and delicately licked her nose, its tongue feather light on her skin, she giggled, and immediately chastised herself for being so immature. Giggling was something Anna did, and something that Elsa only did with Anna. She hadn't giggled in pure amusement since she was seven.

Certain that they would not melt against her fingertips, she reached out tentatively to touch them, only to get pelted in the back of the head with absolute accuracy, her prim, perfect hair a mess.

"Alright then," she growled, after shaking the powdery snow from her cold hair, forming a snowball of her own in her hand, "come out, coward! I don't know if you think you're a spirit, or some sort of crazy herald, but I swear, if I find you—"

"You'll what?"

She finally shrieked in surprise; she had been so nervous that his voice had actually scared her. The snowball, once wet and meant only to surprise, was frozen to icy hardness and launched in the general direction of Frost's voice. He dodged the projectile easily and whistled, impressed.

"You're a little anxious, aren't you?" he asked teasingly, as if the queen had not just launched a spiked ball of ice at his head.

Annoyed with his lackadaisical attitude, she growled in frustration and tried her best to control the ice spikes that had appeared before her. He did not move, even as the sharp point of the tip was dangerously close to his thin neck. His blue eyes looked through her in a way that even Anna's did not, and she found that bothered her more than she would ever admit.

"Who are you?" she asked again, fiercer than before, not an ounce of her uncertainty leaking through to her voice.

He touched a finger to her icicle, and it melted harmlessly, not even a sad puddle left as evidence of its existence. "I told you," he said, his voice soft, leaning closer now that the barrier was gone, "I'm Jack Frost."

.


	2. Elsa

Frost stepped back and the wind rushed into the room, rustling everything that was not super heavy or practically bolted to the floor. The force of the wind swirled around him, as if he were lying in a cradle, and gracefully carried his weight. 

"Why couldn't I see you before? Why have I never seen you before? Why are you here?" she asked, her own curiosity getting the better of her. She cursed herself; she should have known better than to ask a question to a witch, but at least she had not given him her name. 

He shrugged, floating around the balcony but hesitant to enter the room proper. "The first question has an easy answer—you didn't see me because you didn't want to. The second one's a long and complicated story I think only you know the answer to, and the third's just as easy as the first." He grinned, and the expression was so impudent, Elsa had to squash to urge to smack it off of his face. "Why, I'm here because a little breeze—well, that and every superstitious old lady south of Arenhagen—said that the new Witch-Queen of Arendelle wanted to bury the fjords up to their ears in snow." He examined her closely, his eyes far too old for his youthful face (he looked younger than Anna, for God's sake!) and smirked. "I don't know about you, but just looking at you now I don't think I can really believe that. Despite what I heard happened this past summer, I don't think you'd do anything that awful deliberately."

Balancing idly on the edge of one of her chairs, his smirk twisted into a smile, surprisingly genuine. "I think you're a little stiff for winter, but not bad at all."

Elsa was still hesitant, though she lowered her hands, seeing that her powers did not seem to be that effective against him. At least, not if she was consciously controlling them. They had never let her get hurt before, and she was sure that even if this witch, posing as a spirit, could not bypass that sense of security she had. 

"You said that I could not see you because I didn't want to?" she asked, choosing to ignore his earlier statement, as she did not really know what to make of it. 

His smile dimmed slightly, and became tinged with the slightest sense of bitterness and a deep seated sadness that just looked wrong on his face. His was the sort of face that should have been smiling.  
"You didn't believe," he said dryly, wrapping his thin arms around himself, clutching his staff so tightly Elsa could see the outlines of his knuckles. "Your powers can only take you so far, I think, and they're not stronger than doubt. Nothing seems to be."

"What does—"

"Spirits can only be seen if you believe in them. Since we're both of winter, I imagine that you could see me just because you believe so deeply in your power you just saw me by proxy," he shrugged, laughing a little self-deprecatingly. "Trust, when you turned and looked right at me...well, I was little surprised too."

"I'm not too inclined to believe you," Elsa declared. "I've never seen you before. And if you really are the spirit of winter, I would have seen you earlier than this."

He looked at her, up and down, and Elsa tightened her jaw. She could tell when she was being judged, and Jack had nothing nice to say, she thought. "I've been coming here since before you were," he snorted condescendingly. "I've never seen you either. I always remember the faces of the children I see."

"I didn't really get out much as a child," Elsa deadpanned. It was a sad but true fact; as the Crown Princess, it would have been unseemly for her to be running around outside with the common children, getting her dresses filthy and crying out like savages while pelting each other with snow. Even when she and Anna played inside, she was always more content to let Anna be the one to do the running, to enjoy the fruits of Elsa's power. 

Jack laughed, but Elsa did not find much humor in her memories. 

"I thought so. Noble children never really get out, and I never forget the face of a child, especially not once I play with them. I like to show them good times, yeah?" he said, his face brightening.

"But only when they go outside," Elsa said, thinking of all those miserable years and lonely winters Anna must have suffered. Sometimes her own selfishness, blinded by fear and well-meaning, astonished her. "Isn't that a little unfair?"

It was a short moment before Jack answered, but it felt far longer, long enough to be awkward. "It's fair. Winter's only fun if the cold's not going to kill you. Otherwise, it's better to stay inside, to stay away. At least then, you'd be with people you love, and that's almost as good." He smiled nostalgically. "Kids love it the most. I can show them the most."

 

"Show them what?" she asked, curious when Jack did not elaborate.

His smile reappeared suddenly, and he floated closer, landing on the ground as soft as snowflake. "You know! How to have fun! How to loosen up and make the most of the season, how not to be alone." 

He eyed her, but this time, Elsa did not shirk from his startling gaze, so similar to her own. At first glance, his eyes were nearly identical, but Elsa knew her own face. Jack's features were younger, unburdened, and though his expression was carefree, and just the slightest bit sarcastic, his eyes, crinkled at the corners with premature laughter lines belayed a depth of emotion not found in a shallow child. Now, his expression was serious and tinged with sadness, his lips turned down in the corners with a slight frown.

He did not ask, but Elsa could sense the question all the same, Were you alone?

"I was a princess," she said, finally abandoning her defensive stance. There were many opportunities he could have used to attack her, and he took none of them. She headed deeper into the rooms to where the sitting room was; a proper place for a conversation with a man a bedroom was not. She presumed he would follow her in. 

Elsa was still slightly bothered, however calm she appeared. Her hands shook just a little bit, despite her confidence that no one had the capability to truly threaten her, not anymore. She ignored that fact that she had never tested her abilities against someone who might have been able to fight back. It was obvious Jack was not interested in a fight. She was also curious, just a little.

"I was not allowed out of the palace without an escort when I was little, and I mostly traveled in the summer," Elsa admitted. "I never would have seen you, but maybe my sister might have."

"Your sister is the other princess, right?" he asked, before playfully smacking himself on the forehead. "Duh, Jack, who else would the Queen's sister be?" He paused for a moment, contemplating. "I used to draw pictures for her." He flopped into a chair and leaned back, pulling his knees up to his chest and balancing his staff between them. "Her window overlooks the courtyard with the fountain, and there's a gargoyle directly to the left. The shutters are mismatched. She never believed in me, but she always noticed the pictures." 

He drew a finger over the dark stained wood, and its wake leaves, vines, and trees grew in a spread of frost. "Even now, when she goes to visit the peasant children at the orphanage, she'll take them outside to play the games her sister the Queen made up. But winter is long in Arendelle, so I've spent a lot of my time here, but I've never seen either you guys."

Elsa poured herself a cup of tea. The servants had brought it in an hour ago, when she had first retired to her rooms. It had long since gone cold, and was quite unappetizing but she doubted that Jack would care much and she needed to busy her hands.

"I don't have to explain myself to you," she said, colder than she expected. As nice as this boy, witch or spirit, she did not really care anymore, appeared, she could not spill her whole life's story. And that long time had been so very complicated, she doubted anyone would ever understand. Her voice was laced with finality and her eyes were hard.   
Frost fidgeted in his position—to the young Queen, it looked wholly uncomfortable, but she said nothing. Nor did she scowl, though she sorely wanted to. Real queens did not scowl. But that did not mean she did not want to. 

"Sorry to burst your bubble, but you maybe have to?" he sounded apologetic and abashed, far too much for all of it to be genuine. 

"What?" she asked, startled. 

"Explain yourself to me. You have to explain yourself to me," he smiled. "I didn't forget to tell you, did I? Spirit of Winter, self-proclaimed master of fun, Jack Frost." His smile faded somewhat, and he shifted uneasily in the comfy chair. "I actually came here to tell you that you can't go around summoning storms like that in the middle of the summer, even if your magic can compensate for the meltwater. It pisses off the Bird more than anything, and then he comes after me, and me, well, I don't know anything that's going on, so then he threatens to go to Mother Nature and that is...not good. She is not a nice lady. I could go my whole existence not meeting that lady and I would die happy."

Elsa's cheeks flushed, and the crushing feeling of loneliness was her weight to bear once more, uncomfortable and solid in the back of her throat. Of course, not even those like her would be interested in her for her. He had never helped her once when she struggled as a child, this supposed spirit who loved children, what else could she expect now?

"So what?" she snapped, losing her composure, "You've come to rid yourself of an unnatural menace? To kill the witch?"

"Don't be stupid," Jack snapped back just as quickly, his eyes wide with horror at the very notion. "Do I look to be the killing type?"

"Well, I don't know," she said, feeling particularly foolish at the sight of Jack's wide, innocent-looking eyes. "You're the spirit of winter aren't you? Winter kills—it, it freezes people to death, and people are hungry—"

"You have to be exceptionally stupid to die in a winter storm, in my opinion. I don't usually spring them out of nowhere, and blizzards are hard and annoying to make. I don't know who's been teaching you to fear what you are, but you, more than anyone else should understand what winter is really about." 

He was pensive for a second, before his face brightened, eyes glistening with the light of inspiration. A strong breeze blew through the room rattling the poor silverware and dishes and washing huge swathes of papers from her desk. 

"I'll show you! Come on," he said, his voice brightening as he lunged forward and offered his hand. 

She pulled back as he came, but shrieked when he did not stop and grabbed her hand. Even as they rose into the air, the young Queen squirmed and tried to loosen his tight, seemingly unbreakable grip. 

"No!" she shrieked, "I—I have obligations—" she could have smacked herself in the head for her half assed excuse even if Jack had not interrupted her. 

"The first thing you should know is that first and foremost, winter is rest. Maybe you can work through hoarfrost, but normal people can't and you're a right miser is you think I'm going to let the Queen herself deprive herself of a good time!"

Despite being only a little taller than her and skinny as a twig, he was deceptively strong. He wrapped his other arm around her waist, hauling her onto his strangely floating staff, which he gripped with the hand that released her wrist. They were cradled by the whipping winds.

"Wind!" he called confidently into the lively breeze, "Take us North!"


	3. Jack and Elsa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conclusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahahaha remember when i said this would have regular updates? Yeah, I lied. Enjoy!

By God, this woman could scream. 

In a rush of the North Wind that the unsuspecting (unbelieving) people only felt as a strong breeze and a strong flurry of snow, Jack laughed and Elsa screamed. Willing the clouds to give them cover, the Wind took them high, out of sight, into the part of the sky Jack always found more majestic and beautiful. 

Elsa’s eyes were wide, first with fear, then with wonder. Jack had seen the emotion in the eyes of thousands of young children, poor and rich, as they opened gifts on Christmas day. Even adults cultivated the emotion, when a mother held their child, or when a man found his love. 

Where she perched delicately on his staff, mouth agape in wonder, the long train of her gown lost in the clouds and flapping in the wind like the tail of a bird, she was beautiful. Jack clutched his staff a little harder and slackened his grip around her waist.

“It’s not so bad,right?” he said questioningly, not looking at her. He was afraid to see her answer. He had never brought anyone up this far with him. He never knew anyone well enough to want to. Normally, he had always amused himself with the children, and when he was feeling a little more spiteful, a little more bitter, his tricks, but now, he wanted to share something he had always kept close to chest. And it scared him more than anything. 

Elsa stared at him; he could feel her eyes on him. Her gaze was scrutinizing, and the wonder faded from her eyes as she squinted through the obscuring clouds. 

“Where are you taking me?” she asked instead of answering his question. He squashed the tiny amount of sadness that threatened to arise. 

“You should know,” he said, banishing the cloud cover, just as the mountain where the Queen had built the ostentatious palace he discovered bloomed on the horizon, “You made it.”

She stared at the rapidly approaching majesty of the construct, smiling slightly. “I haven’t been here since Anna came after me…” she murmured wistfully. Her expression shifted to horrified. "No! We can't go there; there's a monster, and I don't know if Weaselton's men managed to kill it."

Jack hummed, thinking of the enormous ice construct he’d destroyed while surveying the land coming down from the North Pole. “So that was you! The thing thought it was a Queen. It had a crown and everything. At first it only wanted people to stay away, until it decided to see the rest of its kingdom beyond the mountain pass and started terrorizing the village near the valley.” He nodded at Elsa’s guilty expression. “I took care of it, though. We’re alone.”

She did not say anything as they passed over the gorge and started towards the mountaintop. They passed over the shattered staircase; the doors opened as easily under Jack’s influence as they did under Elsa’s, he imagined, whisper quiet and smooth. 

He whispered that the wind let them down on the great expanse of reflective floors; it deposited them gently on the icy ground. Jack wriggled his bare toes, pinkish blue and unfeeling of the cold. it was silent; Jack could barely hear Elsa’s breathing. He helped the Queen down from where she sat side-saddle on his staff, but she refused his hand and stepped delicately onto the glassy floor. Her slippers hardly made a click.

Jack did not understand why anyone would desire to be alone in such a stifling quiet palace. He would have gone mad in two days in such solitude. If Jack wanted to be alone, he’d rather be in the woods, or the city if it was not rush hour and congested with people. Then, all he’d have to do is draw back his hood and listen, because the desire to be alone passed very quickly. He never wanted to be alone. He just was. 

If he ever stopped trying to banish his loneliness, he would always be alone, and nothing terrified him more than that. It seemed Elsa was exactly the opposite, from how her lips pulled up in the corners in the shadow of a real smile. Her pleasure was as subdued as her demeanor.

“We’re alone,” he repeated, swinging his staff around sharply to point at the queen. He was pleased to see her bring her hands up in retaliation, though a little less pleased to see sharp ice flare up all around her, like pointed pikes waiting for a corpse. “Let’s see what you’ve got!”

Around her, he began to prowl lightly, his bare feet barely touching the icy floor of the huge, empty palace. His eyes flicked down quickly to glance at the ground; small pointed spikes rising out of the ice to follow his path. The queen seemed to be doing it unconsciously. He could start to almost believe the testy summer spirit’s rant about ‘winter’s trespass’ against her. 

“We’ll play a game,” he said his unease never showing through his careless tone. “The first person to get hit three times with this—” in his hand formed soft, powdery snowball that would explode with hardly any force, “— is the loser.” 

 

Elsa had not expected the game to be so hard. Whenever she’d played with Anna, she’d beaten her little sister easily, with hardly any effort. Most of the time when Anna had won, it was because Elsa let her, not that she would ever let her little know that. 

But she hadn’t had a proper snowball fight in years, and she rarely left the palace, and she was beginning to suspect that Jack had played this game far too much. Elsa was winded within seconds of the agile young man flinging a snowball. Jack had led her on a wild goose chase around the room in vengeance. She stayed mostly stationery.

He couldn’t hit her; her magic ensured that, but she couldn’t hit him either. Where Weaselton’s goons had only been able to strike from two directions, she could pin them easily. And once they were pinned, they were out of commission. 

Jack was everywhere, it felt like, leaping and laughing and smirking and so damn difficult to hit once she’d put up her defenses. His attacks were always stopped by her sharp, warped walls of ice, though his snowballs hardly merited being called an attack. The popped in gentle puffs of snow and left frosty patterns. The wind disguised his presence, sliding gracefully across the ice, flipping and dodging and flinging gentle flurries her way. When he tried dropping a snowball on her head, her walls grew over her head. 

Her walls grew around her, until she was surrounded by them like she was enclosed in an especially tiny fortress. Through the warped ice, she could just make out Jack. He was barely a blur of brown, white and blue. Despite her best efforts, she could barely summon the feelings that had melted the ice and yoke of winter the first time. She was too frustrated. 

so, if she couldn’t be happy and melt the ice, fine. With her frustration, all her annoyance and fear at being kidnapped by a mysterious entity claiming to be the spirit of winter of all things, she summoned a spike of ice from the floor and shattered the walls keeping her in. 

Of course, a snowball had to hit her then, exploding in a puff of bright white dust, staining the breast of her dark cloak gray. 

“That’s one!” he mocked, forming more ammo easily. 

Elsa backed away, stooping down (however un-queenly the action was) and scooping up the snow that had formed in piles around her from Jack’s failed attempts to hit her. She didn’t even bother to make it a perfect snowball. A small flake landed on her eyelashes. She didn’t remember making it snow, though fat, wet flakes drifted down from the now cloudy ceiling. 

She knew she had the power to make it snow, she’d done it for Olaf and countless times in her youth for Anna (though sometimes she felt tempted to classify the things she could do when she was young as an entirely different thing— that was before she knew to be afraid of herself). This snow wasn’t her own. She could always feel her magic in her snow, and her magic felt her emotions— her happiness, her fear, her sorrow. This snow felt like a snow day, like those rare days when she would venture out with her mother and baby Anna was left indoors. They’d sit at the frozen fountain and paint pictures in the ice with frost. 

When had her gift become so difficult to control? she wondered. Once upon a time, it was as easy as breathing, and the thought that snow and ice could hurt someone was inconceivable to her naive, if prudent mind. 

Before she could raise her arms to aim and throw, she was pelted in the face. 

“Too slow!” Jack cackled, and dropped her hastily made snowball and wiped the cold water out of her eyes. Elsa frowned in determination. She was a queen! She would not be made a mockery of!

“What’s the point of this anyway?” Elsa yelled. “I can control my powers— I unfroze Arendelle, I saved my sister. People don’t fear me anymore!”

“No you’re not,” Jack said, his tone unkind, “You’re only in control when your happy. And no offense, Queenie, but you don’t look exactly the jolly type. You’re still afraid of yourself.”

Elsa paused, surprised he wasn’t taking the opportunity to win his pointless little game. Then what he said registered, and she narrowed her eyes in anger as the ice spread out around her feet. 

“I’m—”

“You’re powerful, you know?” he interrupted her, and she was caught off guard once more, “You could probably kick my ass if you really wanted to. I’m not the fighting type, in case you couldn’t tell. Winter’s a pretty relaxed season. All those politics, all those crazies— no, I didn’t stand for that in my first years as the herald. I chased them away, and they learned not to mess with what’s mine. And the whole season is mine. Do you know what makes the crazy winter witches and monsters that your people so feared when they called you a witch?”

“I’m not a witch!” she said instead, because she didn’t really know the answer. Just as she had grown up with warnings and fairy tales of the generous, tricky trolls in the far north and the one-eyed giants to the east, witches were the stuff of nightmares. They’d always been evil, bitter old women jealous of good people and longing without restraint for kindly men. 

“Of course you are,” Jack said, “you don’t think everyone can just simply force the wind to summon an out-of-season storm against its will? But that’s not the point. What makes a witch a witch— well, magic— but makes a witch a problem? I’ll tell you,” he carried on, “in the north, they describe it best, I think.”

He gripped his staff, crossed his slight, thin ankles and leaned against the tall crook, his warm looking cloak putting his pale, frost covered skin in stark relief. “They say ‘beware the frozen heart’. If you were some psychotic villain out to freeze every peasant within a hundred miles— well, yes, I’d do something. I’d have to do something.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she said, her hands dropping to rest languidly by her waist. She’d been irritated near the start of his rant, but once she’d really started listening, she began to wonder, more and more, whether this boy really was the spirit of winter or simply crazy. Elsa had spent so long hating herself, hating her powers, hating the cold she couldn’t feel and the heat she couldn’t escape, hating and loving Anna and her earnesty and undying love and refusing to look out the window to see the pretty pictures that dotted her window every night when winter came. 

Elsa might have always been able to make it snow, even in the middle of the summer, but frost on the windows was a phenomenon that belonged especially in the dead of winter. She never knew if Anna ever noticed it, but she always had. It made her feel normal, that there was one thing she couldn’t do. 

Jack’s face was uncharacteristically pensive. “”I didn’t think that you would even see me. Only those who believe in me can see me, and no one besides very young children can see me. I was going to tail you around for a little bit, but when you saw me— well, I couldn’t give up the opportunity. You have a good heart. It’s warm, but fragile.”

His face broke out in a grin. “I’m not the spirit of summer. I can believe in accidents.” He stepped forward and jauntily bowed. “I say we call a truce!”

“A truce?” she nearly shouted at his sudden flip from utter seriousness to utter ridiculousness. He looked like an overeager child. “Weren’t you the one who started flinging fluff balls at me!” 

He pouted, sarcasm in every part of the expression. “Does that mean no truce?”

Elsa pretended to ponder it over. He looked completely unapologetic, but then, he hadn’t truly apologized. “No more snowballs?”

“On my honor, Queenie,” he flung himself and winked. Elsa wrinkled her nose in distaste and he laughed. “Come on, I still want to show you something.”

Jack skated silently across the reflective ice glass floor, elegantly dancing around the piles of snow and the sharp, scary spikes of ice. Elsa walked after him. Her heels clicked loudly on the floor. 

He led her to one of her sculpted balconies. The wind was bitterly cold and blew thick snow flurries that blinded her. She imagined her cheeks would have been red and her nose runny and numb, the way Anna always complained, if she could feel it. She almost expected him to grab her around the waist and fling her outside the window again. Instead, he leaned against the beautifully sculpted balustrade. The wind tousled his hair, and he ran his fingers along the icy leaf. 

“This is beautiful,” he breathed, and he didn’t bother to mask the wonder in his voice and the brightness of his eyes. 

“It was hard,” she admitted. “I just...let go.”

He grinned. “I bet that was a lot more fun than man-impaling ice.”

She didn’t answer. Elsa would never admit that Jack could be right about something. 

“It’s shame, whoever taught you to be afraid of your powers,” he sighed, an exaggerated expression of a faux world weary man. “Ice is easy. Rage, anger, fear— drop the temperature, and bam, you got ice. Snow is a little harder— each is an individual creation. It’s so much more delicate, so it’s different, even though it’s really just the same thing. That’s why I like frost so much— it’s like you can see the pretty individuality of snow on the ground.”

“You know, I’ve said that I’m not afraid of it anymore,” Elsa said, folding her hands in her lap and lifting her head high. “I couldn’t have made this if I was.” She reckoned Jack acted like a little child, the way Anna did when she got some impossible, crazy idea in her head. The only way to defeat a stubborn child was with logic. They understood it, but liked it a lot less when it didn’t quite serve their purposes. 

“Sure you’re not. I can see that now. But I think there’s a difference between saying you’re not afraid and then being unafraid. Your magic can tell. Once you make, it doesn’t just, you know, go away.” The tips of his long, dry fingers tapped his bluish lips. 

“It did for me,” she said, resolutely. She’d seen it, seen it vanish before her entire eyes, seen it crawl in reverse across the land, and watched the summer flair back into life. 

“Did it really? I’m pretty Anna’s still got that streak of white hair,” he flipped his own and grimaced. “The only thing that could unfreeze her was love. But that streak of white is still there. It’s a testament to your mistake. But you don’t need me to tell you that.”

Elsa stepped away from the window, and was suddenly reminded of when he had first appeared out of nowhere in her rooms. 

“That doesn’t matter,” she said resolutely. “It will never, ever happen again.” Ice and frost spread across the floor beneath her shoes in a cold lattice. 

Jack glanced down at it, but said nothing. They stood together in silence for a long time. The sun dipped lower and lower in the sky. The night was frigid, Elsa imagined, so high on the mountain. 

“Take me back,” she said, breaking the quiet, which had become less comfortable and more oppressive the longer they stood there. Jack was so still, it was almost as if he were an incredibly vivid statue. He jumped at the sound of her voice. 

He took his stand to hand and offered her his other one, bowed low, for once, not in total mockery. Eyes on the ground— how unbefitting for a queen, she mused— she stepped closer to him, and the wind whipped around the two, carrying her in the cradle of its arms. 

She clenched her eyes closed and almost wished she was balanced on Jack’s crook. It was more reassuring than the feeling of the nothing but rushing air throwing her skirts around. Heaven forbid there be anyone beneath her. 

It was far too quickly when they arrived at her balcony. He remembered it perfectly, and let her down gently. She stepped daintily from the balustrade onto the floor of her lavish rooms. Some had been in and refilled the oil lantern and restocked the furnace, although neither were lit. She appreciated the gesture though. Anna always took a warm, lit room as an invite to enter. She never even bothered to knock anymore. Elsa loved that more than anything. Winter night especially had been lonely. 

She turned away, careful not to meet his eyes, and prepared to enter her room. 

“Umm, Queenie?” 

She paused, despite the instantaneous spike of irritation at the nickname. “Yes?”

“Um,” she looked up at last. His huge, pale eyes— paler than her own— glittered forlornly. “Don’t hesitate to call me sometimes. Winter is my favorite season, but it can get a little lonely sometimes.”

And did Elsa ever understand than. But Jack Frost had the whole wide world, and Elsa had only ever had her huge, cold, dark empty room and shadows. 

“How?”

“Just say my name to the winter wind, and I’ll hear.” And with a blazing grin Elsa decided was completely inappropriate for a winter spirit, he took off in a flurry of snow, and Elsa was alone. 

Her heels clacked softly, muted by the rich carpets that had long since dried, and lit the lamps. She closed the door and drew closed the drapes, and lit the fire and basked in its too warm light. Her cape was discarded on the floor and her heels were toed off, and she leaned back, exhausted in her favorite chair. 

Sure enough, Anna burst in after forty or so minutes, still dressed for the day as the evening had hardly begun. Elsa would recognize the quick pitter-patter of her slippers on carpet anywhere. 

“Elsa! I know you’re in here— what happened?” her cheeks were rosy red and a tea tray was heavy in her arms. She pushed aside the abandoned fare from earlier in the day. Elsa stared at her bare, pale hands, her brow knitted in thought. 

“Anna, have you ever heard of a tale of a spirit of winter called Jack Frost?”

~End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment on your way out please. I would totally appreciate some concrit.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Drop me a line, or check out some of my other stuff! (I've got two other RotG fics...posted.)
> 
> Please review, and have a good night! I'll see you all next Friday!
> 
> YellowWomanontheBrink
> 
> 8:56 pm
> 
> June 19, 2015


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